They worked Life Aquatic and Mr. Fox to be 300 and 700 respectively, leaving gaps at the time of their releases. The latter wasn't so bad but when Aquatic came out they were only in the late 280s and didn't get to 301 for another few months, so it was obvious they gave the title the "special" 300 mark.

While this is a joke, it's kind of an important point. Lynch has said in multiple interviews FWWM is important to the upcoming season. If you're one of the many who first saw the show on Netflix or wherever the hell its streaming now, where do you go for FWWM? Buying a box set isn't really a fun option for most people. Locking this in as a Criterion is a pretty solid move. Both business wise and for the legitimacy of the film, which will have more eyes on it soon than it has in decades.

The easy answer is you get FWWM on Showtime as that is ostensibly where you are watching Season 3 anyway.

mfunk9786 wrote:If you're in Philadelphia or can get there, tickets are running alarmingly low for the second of two screenings (the first sold out) of a fan-made cut of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me with the deleted scenes from The Missing Pieces re-inserted back into the film using Lynch's screenplay as a guide for their chronological placement. I have no idea how good or bad this is going to be in terms of the quality of the work doing this splicing, and am keeping my expectations low, but it sounds like a great idea in general despite my usual aversion to seeing anything that isn't director-approved when possible.

Returned from this tonight both dazzled by Lynch's career-best work on this film and frustrated by the idea that merely re-inserting deleted material would result in something resembling a "complete" work rather than an "incomplete" one. The actual handiwork of putting The Missing Pieces back into Fire Walk with Me was seamless (until the first post-film credit was to a bunch of online usernames...) - the film looked fantastic throughout and there was never a point where I even noticed an unusual cut or insertion of new material. It flowed like a completed film would. But it was not Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. There are some truly wonderful moments in the Palmer household (highlighted by a chant of an Icelandic phrase) that contrast with the moments of sheer horror that made it into the final cut of the film, along with intimate portraits of Laura's comparatively low-impact interactions with the Hayward and Briggs families that really bring to horrifying light how awful her home life was. But with the context of the series in tact (presumably - again, I have no point of comparison to someone who has seen this film but didn't watch Twin Peaks), I don't see these scenes as being necessary and I can understand why Lynch saw them as acceptable cuts.

That being said, taken as a total package, there are moments that I can't believe we've been deprived of for all these years - Chris Isaak beating up the sheriff, Laura and Donna's terrifying joyride to the film's loud and stimulating centerpiece, and the hilarious moment when Isaak and Sutherland are interviewing a coworker of Teresa's while we get a fourth wall-breaking look at why a Lynchian lightbulb is flickering in the background.

But where the cut faltered the most is during check-ins with the series' regulars - they suddenly feel so useless - one wonders why Lynch wasted his time giving us a little peek at what these characters were up to in the week leading up to Laura's death, because as far as the story is concerned, what does it matter?

There is an excellent middle ground cut of this film (Criterion + Lynch, maybe?) that has yet to be seen that would pull in the scenes that flesh out both the stunning introductory sequences of the film and Laura's truly terrifying home life, but I'm afraid to say that in spite of my love of the TV series, the rest of this fan edit falls short due to the same sweet comedic touches that made this whole enterprise so successful in the first place. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me has always been such a powerful film because of its exploration of the sort of evil that resulted in Laura Palmer's death, and her hopeless day-to-day reality, and adding little asides with our favorite TV buddies sort of drains all of the blood from that, both literally and figuratively, even if the insertion of some of these Missing Pieces adds to the terror in an impressive way here and there.

One other thing I will say though - Sheryl Lee gives perhaps my favorite performance in the history of cinema, and it's the reason why I'm so enthralled with this film and why I think it's woefully underrated even in this moment of re-evaluation it's been granted on the heels of the new Showtime season. Never has Lynch's vision of a terrifying underbelly in 'aw, shucks' suburban life been so fully fleshed out, and never have the effects of such horror been visualized in such a crystalline way on the face of an actress. Lee gives this film everything she ever had and then some, and taking the journey of Laura Palmer's final days with her is not only a voyeuristic surprise (I mean - how insane is it that anyone gave Lynch enough money to make this?), but an absolute honor. We're watching someone working through some of the most complicated and difficult emotions imaginable, with a whole lot of context and backstory and texture, and for what? This film was panned upon release, ignored for years following that, and only now carefully revisited as some sort of Pandora's Box full of clues as if Lynch was ever remotely interested in just making paint-by-numbers puzzle boxes for us to solve. This film is underrated, sure - but Lee's performance (and career, in retrospect) - deserves so, so, so much better. She, much like Laura, was robbed of so much.

Great post, mfunk. I agree completely - I think the Missing Pieces are pretty terrific, but they only should be seen on their own, as a separate film/compilation of deleted scenes. Putting them into the film itself does not interest me, and not only because fan edits in general I don't care for just out of principle, altering the director's vision and rarely if ever actually besting it.

But I'd make two main points: 1) The film is already pretty long at 135 minutes or so, and making it into a 3+ hour epic just does no favors. In all honesty, FWWM could probably use some trimming as it is, certainly not expansion and becoming an even more digressive film. Basically, when you consider the Missing Pieces and how much they digress and detour and have often nothing really to do with Laura's story, I think it makes sense because Lynch had just made Wild at Heart -- his most narratively digressive, messy film - very maximalist in a way, showing us so many flashbacks or visions or superfluous and quirky new characters that it becomes overwhelming. FWWM with the Missing Pieces wasn't quite on that level but it's still going in that direction. And I'm very happy that he cut those out and made it a more focused and devastating film. But even as is, I'd say some of the FBI stuff feels kind of unnecessary (much as I love it) -- mainly just the one scene with Cooper and Albert where Coop says he knows who the next victim is, as it cuts in between Laura's story and thus seems kind of jarring. Hell, I adore the opening prelude in Deer Meadow, really love it, but I think one could make the case for cutting out the whole opening section and just starting with Laura. That would be an even more powerful, focused film.

I do think there's 2 or 3, tops, scenes from the Missing Pieces that I would indeed say could fit well in FWWM... I think mainly of the creepy as fuck scene of Laura waiting in the bushes for James and then seeing Leland walk up the front path and stare in her direction with this demonic glare, really eerie; and also, the heartwarming little scene in the Hayward house where Doc gives Laura a "prescription." But... this leads to my other point, which is that... 2) The Missing Pieces are actually shot and edited in quite a different way from FWWM. I don't know how much of this was Lynch circa 2014 choosing certain coverage/angles in editing them, but it's very noticeable the way that the MP are shot in a way more like the series: wide shots, static master shots, just generally minimal camera movement, are all quite present. Contrast this with FWWM, which is striking for its departure from the series's more classical wide master shots, instead using a ton of visceral, emotional close-ups, and a kind of kinetic, fractured editing style that's more radical than the more conventional/leisurely long takes found in both the series and the MP. So even if Lynch decided to use wider shots and longer takes for the MP in 2014 instead of using FWWM-esque close-ups, etc, then it still means that any fan edit of the two will have this aesthetic discrepancy.

And yes, mfunk, Sheryl Lee in FWWM is certainly one of my very favorite performances in all of cinema. She is so raw, so committed, so real, it's unbelievable; as if she was channeling this dark and dangerous force, really -- it's not surprising to read her saying how hard it was to shake the character off afterwards. It's an astonishing film, just that it even exists... so much of it was comprised of unlikely circumstances converging and happy accidents. It's the movie that really shows Lynch for the humanist he is, it's really one of the most compassionate films out there.

I generally think that it is better to view the relationship of The Missing Pieces to Fire Walk With Me as being equivalent to the relationship that More Things That Happened has to Inland Empire (and I kind of have a suspicion that we wouldn't have had The Missing Pieces in the form it was presented in without the creation of More Things That Happened a few years earlier). They're both about existing in a world of moments in which the demands of narrative drive that the main features are necessarily tied to, loose as they may be, have been removed. Both of those works feel somewhat liberated by their underground status as a 'collection of deleted scenes that have been composed into a feature length piece' (and I think that I may enjoy More Things That Happened even more than Inland Empire itself!).

that's a really good point about the Missing Pieces having a different visual rhythm than the feature. I think they feel different, too, because they have a sparser sound mix, which is probably partly a result of the way they were put together (likely without the budget of the feature) but maybe also suggests Lynch's changing approach.

one wonders why Lynch wasted his time giving us a little peek at what these characters were up to in the week leading up to Laura's death, because as far as the story is concerned, what does it matter?

there have been a few scenes in the new series that felt like fan service of this sort, most notably the scene between David Lynch and David Duchovny which was not just poorly written and unimaginatively staged, but featured an embarrassing, protest-too-much reminder from Lynch that he has been trans-friendly for decades.

anyway, I've written this before, perhaps on this very thread, but for the most part I'm glad that the entirety of the Fire Walk with Me script wasn't included in the final cut. not only does the rather bloated script include all manner of scenes that, as mfunk9786 notes, tiresomely "give us a little peek" at what various characters are doing, but also provides a kind of connective tissue that can best be described as disappointing. for example: it does much to explain the appearance of the David Bowie character that in the film is more disturbing for being inscrutable. I think keeping the relationships between the various characters (and their doppelgangers) in and around the Black Lodge vague or even contradictory serves the mood of malevolence and random threat better than more conventional exposition.

I haven't read Mark Frost's newish book, but it sounds like he takes the more conventional approach, trying to dot his "i"s and cross his "t"s in explaining the supernatural/extraterrestrial mythology of Twin Peaks (and in the process tying it to all manner of conspiracy theories). there's more than a hint of this banality in the new series, evident in the often excessively literal dialogue (the One-Armed Man telling Good Dale what's going on, Evil Dale saying he fears being "sucked back into the Black Lodge") and in some of the plotting.

whaleallright wrote:there's more than a hint of this banality in the new series, evident in the often excessively literal dialogue (the One-Armed Man telling Good Dale what's going on, Evil Dale saying he fears being "sucked back into the Black Lodge") and in some of the plotting.

I think we need a few solid plot points to grab onto, otherwise we'll get completely lost.

Where do good prints go when they die? Seeing it in a warm-and-grungy, old 35mm was revelatory (for someone who considers it one of their favorite films but has only seen it on home video) and if the upshot of Janus taking the film over is that I never have the chance to see a print again, it would be a tragic trade-off, indeed.

teddyleevin wrote:Where do good prints go when they die? Seeing it in a warm-and-grungy, old 35mm was revelatory (for someone who considers it one of their favorite films but has only seen it on home video) and if the upshot of Janus taking the film over is that I never have the chance to see a print again, it would be a tragic trade-off, indeed.

It would, indeed, except with the film's theatrical exhibition being out of Time Warner's hands, its possible that Janus would be more amenable to collectors' prints being screened (after proper compensation and legal clearances). The film is a marvel in 35mm-an incredible visual and aural assault that features one of the best sound designs I've ever heard.

Incredible indeed. Seeing it from the front row center was indeed nothing short of an assault; it felt equally as immediate as it did a vestige of 1992. I may or may not have cried while watching it (sympathetically during "Wash your hands....")

Watching the "Partyland"/Canada club scene on the recent Entire Mystery transfer, I just could only imagine how amazing it'd be in 35mm. Because the new transfer actually got it right, and had the dialogue very low in the mix, hence the subtitles (unlike the old New Line DVD, which had the dialogue in that scene perfectly audible, making subtitles seem an odd choice at best).

I know that Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive and Blue Velvet were astonishing in 35mm -- some of the most memorable such experiences I've had. And a big, big part of that was due to the sound design. From a screening in 2010 I still remember the power of that crashing-dishes match cut, late in the film, from the dinner party to the diner like it was yesterday. And something about Blue Velvet in general was amazing, it just seemed like it was truly made to be seen on 35mm in a theater with a good sound system, and nothing less. Needless to say, the darkness of so much of Lost Highway was as beautiful and striking as ever, as was the low rumbling and various drones throughout. And the look of that film on 35mm only confirmed my suspicion that the Universal/Focus bare-bones disc from '08 is by far the only real accurate transfer out there, with the European blu's being totally off-base and far too light. They have a kind of weird blue hue whereas the film should be tinged with green, yellow, brown (but most of all, black).